Fools
by Kusari Etc
Summary: Slash between Meriadoc and Peregrin. My first ficlet on the subject. Time will only tell if it is that last. Enjoy.


            "Ai, my body's just screaming for four feet of flat space," Pippin moaned piteously, bumbling along the darkened, dirt road.

            "That is precisely what you get for drinking so much," Merry rolled his eyes and tried to bear the fallen weight of his friend, who had suddenly become very unaccustomed to his own two feet.

            "Whoa! Take care now!" he cried, nearly tumbling to the ground with the wholly inebriated halfling.

            "Sorry Merry," Pippin muttered, not removing himself from his new crutch, but instead laying his curly head on the nearest shoulder and draping an arm across his back.

            "It is all right," he sighed, continuing on to walk and support the drunken weight pressing down on his right side now. Not particularly too hard, but rather unbalancing.

            "Merry?" Pippin said suddenly, his voice still quiet and somewhat awed.

            "Yes?" the crutch replied, exhausted of it all.

            "Do you remember.." he trailed off, as if suddenly distracted by the cool breezes and mottled moonlight splashing onto the path.

            "Remember what, Pip?" Merry said exasperated now with his alcohol-effected talk.

            "When we met? For the first time?"

            "The Tooks have known the Brandybucks for ages, Pippin. We have _always_ known each other, you dolt."

            "No," the younger hobbit replied, taking on a serious tone and tilting his head just a degree, "When… when we really became friends. For honest."

            Merry looked down at the large eyes awkwardly angled towards him. A soft haze-edged memory touched his mind. The tow of them – barely bigger than their own feet – tumbling down the shallow cliff at the edge of farmer Willowbottom's orchard and landing in the muck with an arm full of green apples each.

            The giggled childishly at their trick, especially as they heard old Willowbottom's voice crying out angrily at the "marauders" and wishing much ill on them both. They shared the fruit and he could still remember the sweet-yet-a-bit-too-sour taste of the juice dripping down their chins. Not to mention their aching bellies at eating every last one of the half-ripe apples. Both of their mothers worried endlessly, as any good Hobbit mother would, when their boys didn't eat their dinners and barely touched their suppers!

            "Yes, Pip… I remember," he smiled gently.

            "I knew you would," the intoxicated Took smiled back and his loose grip fell to position his hand loosely at the minor arch of Merry's hip.

            After a few more minutes of silently treading the path to one of the Shire's farther Hobbit Holes from the Inn, Merry looked down at his friend. The youth had sobered up a tad, but still had a dreamy countenance about him with his half-lidded eyes a faint smile.

            "Why did you ask that?" he suddenly burst the silvery noise of crickets and late-birds. Pippin lifted his head to glance up at his drinking partner quite curiously.

            "Ask what?"

            "If I remembered, you great half-wit," he murmured the latter underneath hearing.

            "I… just would have liked to know if you could have forgotten," Pippin replied with a mellow voice and again leaned his head on Merry's shoulder. The rounded a tranquil slope of blue-green and Merry pushed no further on the subject, though it prodded his mind uncomfortably.

            Easing the door open, he helped Pippin back to his quarters and into his bed. The sloshed halfling's eyes closed almost before Merry's much more steady hands could ease the duvet up to his shoulders.

            Starlight struck the face before him, and the soft, pure light diminished the drunken flush, making his rounded cheeks and defined nose seem so sweetly cherubic and not as roguish and mischievous as usual. Merry smiled fondly and pushed a few ringlets of dusty-straw colored hair back from his forehead. On impulse, he leaned in and placed an equally angelic kiss on the indistinct pucker of his mouth.

            "You are a simpleton of a Took, Peregrin," he hummed as he shut the bedroom door and began to head home, "If you think that I could ever let you fall out of my memory."


End file.
